The island's museum is in the ferry town of Winslow, at 215 Ericksen Ave. N.E. It's close enough to visit by walking from the ferry dock, where state ferries from downtown Seattle regularly disgorge thousands of passengers.

I'll write more about the creosote retort in a bit, but first I want to describe a featured exhibit inside the museum.

Bainbridge Island was the site of the first round up and confinement to internment camps of Japanese Americans, following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Many of those from Bainbridge Island were sent to Manzanar, Calif.

Ansel Adams, perhaps America's greatest landscape photographer, knew the commander of the camp and was allowed inside to take photographs. Some of his photos are on display at the Bainbridge Island museum. Portraits of people were a different form of photography for Adams, who resumed photographing the Western landscape after the war until his death in 1984.

View full sizeThe Bainbridge Island plant with some of its creosote retorts. It had as many as 18 at peak production.Bainbridge Island Historical Museum

The island museum has other exhibits on nautical themes, early explorers and settlers, fossil remains and industrial development.

The creosote industry was one of the biggest on the island. About a century ago, raw logs were sent to the creosote factory on the shore of Eagle Harbor, where they were prepared for placement inside a dozen creosote retorts. Each retort was 132 feet long and could hold a number of logs, while the logs were embedded with creosote under pressure.

The treated logs were shipped all over the world for use in many ways. Basically, they were a cheaper alternative to steel. The Douglas fir pilings that hold up the 1917 Interstate Bridge on the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver could likely have been treated with creosote on Bainbridge Island.

Obviously, the creosote process created an unbelievable mess. Long after the Bainbridge Island plant went out of business, the location was declared a Super Fund Site. When you look south across Eagle Harbor from Winslow, you see a rare sand beach. The sand was barged in from elsewhere on Puget Sound to cap the creosote damage.

The site continues to undergo clean up and is being converted into Joel Pritchard Park. Oddly enough, the legacy of the creosote plant will be one of the better municipal parks on the waters of Puget Sound.

The tube displayed at the entry to the museum is only a small part of a creosote retort. A placard on the inside of the tube explains the history of creosote on the island and the evolution of Pritchard Park. Pritchard was a Bainbridge Island resident who served as Washington's lieutenant governor from 1988-97. He also is credited with inventing the sport of pickleball in 1965 on Bainbridge Island.

(Additional stories, videos and photo galleries will appear on this site in the coming weeks.)